Riders in the Tour de France will cycle through some of the world’s most valuable vineyards on Thursday, when Stage 6 takes them to the champagne region and the hometown of France’s wartime hero and former president, Gen. Charles de Gaulle.
The stage starts in Vesoul and heads to Troyes in the northeastern department of Aube.
When a Tour stage started in Troyes in 2003, the town awarded the race leader at the time his body weight in champagne. While Lance Armstrong’s teammate Victor Hugo Pena weighed only 70 kilograms (154 pounds), the U.S. Postal team’s staff still loaded about a dozen boxes of the sparkling wine aboard its bus.